So What The Heck Is A Liberservative Anyway?

I have identified as Libertarian since I was nineteen. Twenty three long years of explaining to people that that my personal moral values and beliefs are mine to hold but do not reflect what I believe government should mandate or codify into law outside of three, maybe four of the Ten Commandments. People should be free to enter into contracts as consenting legal adults and make decisions, even those I feel may be at their own moral hazard. In addition to that, my ideological beliefs are classified as minarchist.

So what does that mean in concrete terms?

As a Libertarian, I do not oppose gay marriage nor to I propose to roll back Rowe vs. Wade. I think just about any law that creates a black market for goods and services is probably a bad law. I think the War on Drugs is responsible in many ways for the current problems in Mexico, Central America and South America that have poor, unskilled workers and children flooding our southern border. I believe in the free movement of goods and people across sovereign borders with appropriate controls for health and safety. Anything that interferes with with a free market system is terrible. My economic advisers are Friedman and Sowell. I also have an innate distaste for long term entitlement plans of any kind except for those individuals who truly require society’s support. My foreign policy philosophy most closely follows Rand Paul’s and is only a step away from his father.

As a minarchist, I believe strongly that the majority of codified law should evolve as close to the community of the individual as is reasonable and the power of the central government to govern behavior and economic activity should be severely limited. The enumerated powers granted to the Federal government in the Constitution may have been too generous, but I can live with them if they are strictly interpreted. The Federal agencies, other than those governing the military, printing our money and regulating interstate commerce in its most narrow interpretation, need to be abolished.

So how in the good Lord’s name did she start to work for Wayne Dupree and WAAR Media? Great question as you are contemplating hitting the unfollow button on Twitter. Give me a minute. The last six years happened.

The entitlement state has expanded rapidly making an ever wider segment of the population immune to the state of the economy. Washington essentially prints money to keep up a ridiculous level of spending on programs that are inefficient, wasteful and far beyond the scope our Founders intended after they apply an abusive tax on only a portion of their citizens. Regulation, including Obamacare, is out of control with a rogue IRS, DOE and EPA. Radical feminists have successfully started a war on men that is eroding the civil right of due process for our young men. And finally, there is an entire radical faction of Islam that would like to kill me because I refuse to wear a burka and am Christian.

The last six years have not changed my core political beliefs, but they have changed my priorities. There is nothing more critical to the long term success of the United States then rolling back the power centralized in Washington. We need significant deregulation of the economy and an overhaul of the Federal tax code that eliminates the redistribution of income and regulation of individual behavior. We need desperately to fix the entitlement system to eliminate the incentive for individuals incapable of supporting themselves or their families with skills of economic value to cross our borders and overload the system. The power of the economy needs to be unleashed through reduced regulation and oversight.

In 2008, I held my nose and voted for John McCain because I KNEW living in Chicago that Barack Obama was the complete antithesis of everything I believed. I was right. I voted Conservative and Tea Party candidates in 2010 as the core positions were one I could wholeheartedly support. I was thrilled when folks like Justin Amash, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Mike Lee entered Congress. I held my nose again in 2012 and voted for Mitt Romney. I am not the Libertarian you hate that voted for a third party or stayed home. But I am reaching the limits of my patience with the GOP.

Hence the term Liberservative. In a different world, I would have voted for the party that most closely reflects my ideology. However, in a world where the Progressive Left is encroaching on civil liberties at an alarming rate while marching us down the path of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness, my priority has been stopping their progress. I believe the Conservative movement is best suited to do this and aligns very well with many of the objectives as a step in the right direction. Once the course is righted and the ship is turned, my Conservative friends and I will move on to new items for debate.

This is why I work for WAAR. This is why I carry a Conservative message on many topics and will work tirelessly to remove big government RINO’s and establishment GOP from office. In the meantime, I will ridicule the Progressive Left and Establishment GOP mercilessly. So don’t hate on me for the Libertarian views you see creep into my posts, my writing and my podcast. Whether you know it or not, you need more people like me and respecting the ways we differ in terms of social policy is a necessary evil in achieving your short term objectives.

About Stacey Lennox

Stacey holds a MILR from Cornell University and has held executive positions in Fortune 500 companies managing employment strategy and workforce development. A lifelong Libertarian, she joined the Conservative movement leading up to 2008 elections. Ms. Lennox is a contributor to IJReview for for topics related to Georgia and host two podcasts a week on WAARadio.